‘Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes’ Review

The legendary alto-saxophone player Charles Christopher “Charlie” Parker Jr., nicknamed Yardbird, then Bird, was born in 1920, raised in Kansas City, Mo., and first made his way to New York in 1939. In the mid-1940s, he revolutionized jazz music as one of the principal creators of the harmonically, rhythmically and melodically advanced style named bebop, or bop, and as bop’s greatest virtuoso instrumentalist. Parker, a habitual user of narcotics and alcohol, died in 1955, at age 34. The graffiti “Bird Lives” bloomed on New York walls in the wake of his passing.